Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Are Captains Over Rated?

1) With the naming of Jon Towes as the Black Hawks newest/youngest ever captain the conjecture within the media started: Is Towes too young to be an NHL captain? A list of young captains were then listed ranging from the naming of Crosby and Yzerman to Vinny Lecavlier.

2) Along with the list came commentary of how each handled being named captain at a tender age. Also it was pondered if there was a backlash among veterans to having a peach faced player wearing the C. One columnist even went as far to suggest that it had a negative impact on teams attracting free agents as veteran players would shy away from playing for a team with a pimply faced captain.

3) We at Fauxrumors read these various articles with amusement. Never has an honor/assignment been so over rated! Giving a player "The C" doesn't make him a leader and a leader doesn't need "The C" to be one. Its an absolutely overblown/over rated title. The term Captain or 'A' (which by the way means Alternate NOT Assistant) is only important in terms of communicating with the officials during a game. Teams each have different/altering uses of their 'captain'. Some act as a go between the team and the coach, some are the actual team leader, but we suggest they would be viewed as such with or without the title anyway.

4) We also think its poppy-cock (old English for bullshit) that a vet player who is a UFA might think twice about signing for a team based upon who is the captain. We challenge anyone to come up with one concrete example of this ever happening in the NHL. UFA's take many factors into consideration before choosing a team: Money, location, contender status, the coach, etc. We believe no where on a UFA's list is who is wearing the C.

7 comments:

Mr. Spock said...

For logical reasons I had to weigh in here. A captain is an inportant member of a team. Thats why its a coveted position. Not everyone is captain material as we in Ottawa found out with Mr. Yashin.
That said, it would seem illogical for a free agent player to make the person who has that position as a determining factor

FAUX RUMORS said...

1)We were hoping you'd transport in Spock. LOL We agree that not everyone is captain material. Which is why we said that giving a player "The C" doesn't make him a leader and a leader doesn't need "The C" to be one. Live long and prosper.

T. Lloyd said...

Hey faux did you know that poppycock isn't English? I'm kind of a word origin buff. Its real origin is from the Dutch word pappekak which means soft faeces.

Hey guys thanks for keeping the blog current during the summer. I don't respond to all your posts but enjoy them.

luv2paintball said...

I don't know about the other young captains, but we didn't win here in Tampa because Vinny was too young to be captain, or that he wasn't a good leader. It was because we weren't good enough to win yet.

Shmee said...

Hey Guys,

I didnt see an email address on anyone's profile but I had a quick question for you. If someone wouldnt mind emailing me at capitaladdiction@gmail.com, that would be great. Thanks! Shmee

FAUX RUMORS said...

1) Lloyd: Thanks for the info on the origins of poppycock. LOL yes, we know that this time of year isn't chock full of NHL news, but we still think there's enough out there to keep the blog current(although we leave for Argentina in a couple of days so it probably won't be updated too much next week)
2) Paint: Good points. The same could be said of Yzerman's early days in Detroit, although they didn't strip him of the C like they did Vinny.
3) Shmee: You have mail. ; )

czechmate said...

A player I consider over-rated for his "captain" abilities is Mark Messier... Seems it's easy to captain really good teams, but hard to do it once you have a room full of stars like the Rangers did. Mess was good for a bit, but it became clear there was division there...

 
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